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Professional Development - page 11

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21st Century Education: How Future-Proof Is Your Teaching Career?

in Professional Development

We read a lot about the importance of helping our learners by incorporating 21st century competencies in the classroom these days. One of the reasons given is that many of the jobs our learners will do in the future don’t exist yet so we can’t prepare them for specific roles. How can you mentor your students and stay on track as a teacher in the fast changing world of work?

21st century education: focus on key competencies

In order to integrate 21st century skills in the classroom, we can put a focus on the sort of competencies that employers and researchers indicate are priorities in present-day working environments.

Along with being tech-savvy, a good communicator, a team-player and a problem-solver, critical thinking and creativity are two of the key abilities that frequently appear on the list of important skills. So, here are some questions to help you think about how you can future-proof your career as a teacher by adopting and displaying some key elements of 21st century education.

Are your resources up to date and relevant?

While there is nothing wrong with tried and tested learning materials dating back a few years, not having a sufficient amount of updated content at hand has its pitfalls.

Outdated resources will not take into account current changes and developments in society, education and science. Neither will they feature the latest technology. So if your goal is to promote 21st century competencies in the classroom, freshen up your teaching from time to time (sprinkling in bits of knowledge from your personal experience that can’t be googled is a good idea, too). Your students will thank you!

You can ask yourself:

  • How many of the materials you use date back more than 3-5 years?
  • Which new sources of materials have you used in the last year?
  • What do you do or say in class that your students couldn’t find online?

The good news is, it has never been easier to find updated quality content for your lessons. All you need is a laptop (or tablet / smartphone) and an internet connection. TED talks are a great resource for teaching English while discussing hot topics with your students, and the variety of materials is huge. You can find out how to effectively use them in class here.

21st centuyr education: teaching needs to be intriguing
Sparking interest is key in 21st century education

Are your lessons engaging and learner-centred?

Traditionally, institutionalised education has been centred around the authority of the teacher, with a ‘good’ student equalling an obedient one. Learners have been supposed to listen and pay attention, speak only when asked to and generally follow instructions. For anyone who has ever had to endure such a scenario, do you remember how restrictive and boring that was?

If you want to ensure that your students are engaged and present in your lessons while acquiring skills that will help them outside the classroom, take a look at the following:

  • How often do you base lessons around student-generated materials?
  • What do you do to make each class unique and memorable?
  • To what extent do you show empathy with each individual learner and display knowledge of their specific needs and interests?

Getting your students on board can actually make your life easier. They may know more about certain fields than you do (e.g. technology), and thus can help you enhance your lessons.

Are you empowering your students?

21st century education: the right competencies for moving ahead

As already mentioned, collaboration and creativity are some of the key competencies in our 21st century society. Unlike yesteryear, understanding patterns and being able to transfer and apply knowledge is more valuable than memorising large amounts of data.

Learning is much more about autonomy and social skills these days, with a good teacher stepping back a lot of the time in order to let students practice what they’ve learned. If you want your students to become creative problem-solvers who are capable of self-organisation, consider this:

  • How do your lessons specifically help students solve problems large or small?
  • How do you help your students research information as part of their learning?
  • What different forms of pair and group work do you use to enhance learning via cooperation?

Understanding yourself as a go-to person whose job it is to be there for your learners when things go wrong rather than an all-knowing solo entertainer will simplify matters and help your students grow. Moreover, you will benefit as a teacher if you allow yourself to learn from them as well. And hey, it’s just more fun for everyone!

Do you keep honing your teaching skills?

The key to staying on track in any profession is to keep evolving. For this, talking to peers, sharing ideas and insights is invaluable. Other measures include a certain amount of self-scrutiny as well as adding new techniques to your repertoire every so often. Question time:

  • Who do you cooperate with outside your class as part of your own development?
  • How often do you record your lessons and then analyse and act on your findings?
  • What have you done to increase your repertoire of different ways to start and finish your lessons?

There are lots of resources on the internet to inspire you to try new things; most of them by other teachers sharing their experience and what works for them. Besides, there are plenty of professional associations for teachers out there, so you don’t have to go it alone. With online forums and groups at hand, you may not even have to meet other teachers in person.

To get started, recording your lessons is a good way to evaluate and understand yourself better. Just see to it that you comply with the data protection laws of your country (only use the recordings for educational purposes and you may have to delete them after a while).

21st century education in the classroom: final thoughts

While creating a 21st century learning environment may seem challenging at first, it doesn’t have to be a big headache. With an abundance of online resources, groups and forums at your disposal, you can get a lot of free support. Moreover, encouraging your students to bring in their strengths will benefit them while making your job easier. Win-win!

For further information on 21st century education, you can watch the video below. It’s to the point and will fill you in on everything you need to know in order to understand the main ideas.

Happy future-proofing!

A short video about 21st century education with practical examples

Let’s Talk Business English! What Every Trainer Should Know About The Industry In 2020

in Professional Development

Teaching business English has become a lucrative career option for English trainers in today’s globalised world. Evan Frendo discusses interesting current trends and how the landscape of the industry has changed over the years with Ian McMaster from Business Spotlight.

Ian McMaster: What have been the biggest changes you have observed over your career among users of business English?

Evan Frendo: When I started in business English in the early 1990s, most of my students were managers and people in senior positions. They were the ones who needed English in order to speak to customers, work with partners and so on.

Now, it has become common to see people working in international teams with English as the lingua franca. Many internal meetings are held in English, even in German companies. For many people, a typical day is full of switches from German to English and back to German, depending on what is happening and who is in the room or on the telephone.

There is greater recognition of the fact that business English is not “native speaker” English, but rather the English that people need to do their jobs effectively.

Teaching business English - what teachers and trainers need to know
Different people – different Englishes

This means that there is an increased focus on intercultural communication and soft skills. For example, in some companies where I work, the focus is on understanding “Chinese English”, because this is the type of English the employees will meet when they speak with their clients and business partners.

Experienced business people understand that it is no good having perfect “native-speaker” English if you cannot communicate with your clients.

And what have been the biggest changes you have observed for teachers and trainers?

I think the biggest change I have noticed is that there are more teachers and trainers on the market, and therefore there is more competition. Surprisingly, Germany is a country that does not demand high standards from the people who teach business English, and almost anyone can do it. There are no minimum entry qualifications.

This means that many trainers are not properly trained to do what they are doing, but have simply done a short introductory course on how to be a teacher and then relied on the fact that, as native speakers, their command of the language will get them through.

More and more trainers are now doing certificates in business English training.

In many business English situations, this is adequate, and there are many examples of satisfied customers using trainers like this. But in other cases, such trainers are not good enough.

This has led to another change: some companies have learned from experience and now demand better-trained trainers. And more and more trainers are now doing certificates in business English training.

What type of business English training do people at work really need?

The answer always depends on the specific context. In some situations, a general business English approach will be enough, with the trainer and the learners adapting published materials as necessary to suit their own needs. This type of approach is very common in language schools, for example.

Within companies, however, the approach can be very different, with the trainers and learners spending significant time analysing needs, understanding where the priorities are and then tailor-making the training accordingly.

An important factor here may be business knowledge and content, not just the language.

This sometimes means collaborating with a range of stakeholders to understand what the company’s perspective is, as well as observing language in use — meetings, presentations, negotiations, discussions and so on — to find out where the real communication problems lie.

An important factor here may be business knowledge and content, not just the language. Trainers will often work closely with a client to understand this perspective. Such a collaborative approach requires special skills; so trainers who do this sort of work tend to be well-qualified and experienced.

How is technology changing the way that people use English for work purposes?

Recently, I was in Xi’an, China, doing some work for a client, and I had to take a taxi. The taxi driver didn’t speak any English, and my Chinese is very poor. But I had a card with my hotel address on it, so I wasn’t worried. But this time, the driver chatted to me the whole of the 40-minute trip using an app on his smartphone.

The app allowed us to communicate. We talked about my job, his family, Xi’an and many other things. Such apps are becoming commonplace in the workplace. I often see people using them during meetings, for example. But simultaneous translation apps are only one example of new technology.

The biggest impact of technology is that fewer people will need to learn a language.

Everyone knows how easy it is to translate an email or other written document. The quality is now very good and getting better all the time. And some industries are working hard to eliminate the need for human communication at all in certain areas; computers simply communicate with other computers to pass on information.

Contact between people is still important, but things are changing. The days of relying solely on intuition and personal relationships are disappearing fast. And, of course, there is a lot more remote communication, using technology that simply did not exist a few years ago.

I think the biggest impact of technology, however, is that fewer people will need to learn a language.

Of course, it will always be beneficial to learn foreign languages. But when we measure how long language training takes, compared to the potential advantages, many of us will decide that the method I used with my taxi driver will be enough. It’s all about return on investment.

And how is technology changing the way that people learn and teach business English?

Firstly, the software we use nowadays to analyse language use allows us to understand much better the language that we need to focus on.

For example, we now have access to large collections of language data. We can compare the mistakes that native speakers of German make in English with those made by speakers of other languages, and create language-learning activities that are aimed precisely at German speakers of English.

This means that a whole range of learning resources, from textbooks to dictionaries to magazines, are able to target real needs much more effectively than in the past.

Books, a chalkboard and a tablet on a table
Learning with technology has become the norm

Secondly, the technology available in the classroom and for self-study allows a lot of new things to be done. It is now normal for teachers and learners to use their own devices in class to make recordings, to access resources such as dictionaries and videos, to practise vocabulary and so on.

Most coursebooks now include online activities and exercises. Language-learning apps are everywhere and are offering new language-learning opportunities. It is relatively easy to spend ten minutes every day revising key vocabulary on an app on the daily commute to work, for example.

But perhaps more importantly, these apps are allowing the experts to collect vast amounts of data about how people learn languages. Such research will have a profound influence on how professional trainers do things.

Looking ahead to the next five years, what are the biggest changes that you expect the business English industry to undergo?

Different parts of the industry will go in different ways. The big language schools will get bigger and bigger, and dominate the market even more, to the detriment of small schools and individual trainers working as freelancers.

This trend is already taking place, as many of Germany’s largest multinational companies are seeking to increase the quality of their training providers, and at the same time, bring down the costs.

Universities, colleges and schools will do a much better job of preparing people for the workplace, and less training will be necessary in the workplace itself.

… much more emphasis on soft skills and intercultural skills, rather than a more traditional focus on grammar and vocabulary.

Already, many school leavers have certificates in business English, something that was quite rare just a few years ago. Technology will continue to change the way we think about communication. And, as I said, fewer people will need to spend time learning a foreign language. The way we relate to devices will change as we learn how to use them better.

And those people who do invest in learning a language will demand much more emphasis on soft skills and intercultural skills, rather than a more traditional focus on grammar and vocabulary.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of starting a career as a business English trainer?

First, be prepared to learn from your clients and from experienced trainers. They often know much more about business communication than you do, particularly at the beginning of your career.

Second, be prepared to spend time analysing your clients’ needs. Each client is unique and requires a tailor-made approach. One size does not fit all.

Be aware that technology is really influencing this profession.

Third, do more than an introductory course in teaching — if you want to be a professional, you need to spend real time and effort learning the skills and techniques you require, and you need to keep up to date. Your clients deserve no less. Joining teacher associations, attending conferences and simply networking with others in the profession will all be invaluable.

And finally, be aware that technology is really influencing this profession. If you are interested in how language works, have a look at natural language processing and computational linguistics. These fields are at the cutting edge of what we do, and there are innumerable opportunities at the moment.

This is a shortened version of the interview originally featured in Business Spotlight magazine, issue 7/2019. www.business-spotlight.de

You can read the full interview on Evan’s website.

_________________________

Evan Frendo has been an ELTABB member since 1993, when he first started teaching business English and ESP. He has a background in engineering and works for clients across Europe and in Asia. You can find out more about him on his website www.e4b.de.

The Digital Classroom has Come to Stay – Here’s Why You Should Embrace it

in Berlin/Professional Development

While there are definite advantages to good old-fashioned in-person lessons, the digital classroom offers a vast array of benefits for ESL teachers as well. In this article, Berlin-based online tutor Liam Porter is showcasing the convenience of teaching English remotely and sharing some practical tips.

Teaching English in Berlin: mind the gap!

As an English teacher in Berlin you are probably being stretched thin. You are limited in your earning power by the number of hours in the day. Your students will rarely all live in the same city block. Traversing space on the BVG eats up time to be potentially earning money elsewhere, not to mention your leisure time. Many must drive as much as teach in order to increase their catchment area.

Unless enjoying rare pampered status, most ESL teachers bounce from office to office like travelling salesmen, sitting in cafes during that two hour break on Wednesday with nowhere to go and nothing to do. You tap around on Google calender trying to suppress posing yourself the question, “Isn’t this actually worse than minimum wage?”.

Why not stay home and set up your own digital classroom instead?

With none of the disadvantages mentioned above, an online teacher additionally gains access to a huge pool of potential work. Much of teaching online takes place on platforms such as Learnship and italki.

Teaching online, you might never need to leave the house again.

Students come not only from across Europe, but the market is ever more channelling unfulfilled demand from the East. Teaching online, you might never need to leave the house again. This liberation from commuting will not only increase your earning potential, but it will reduce your costs in ink, public transport and – in summertime – laundry days.

One can go further with online teaching. Learnship and italki are limited by their business models. They provide the administration for booking students and the payroll: quite necessary ‘middle-man’ functions for any language school… yet are they still necessary in the age of savvy customers with search engines at their disposal?

Pick the best learning platforms

In Germany, a search for the keywords “Englischunterricht online” or “Nachhilfe” throws up thriving sites like Superprof, Preply, and Mylingotrip (and of course, Ebay Kleinanzeigen). These platforms do nothing more than take a commission: from the student, and not from the teacher. They then simply link the contact details of the learner with the ad-poster. Unlike the employer business model of Learnship and italki, these sites leave it entirely up to you how to run your course and what you charge.

A digital teacher therefore has the chance to teach students beyond his own city and charge beyond typical Berlin rates. Geographical limitations dissolve, and your teaching performance also loses constraints. Say goodbye to never having a wet pen in the classroom (and never a black one); turning up late and out of breath due to unexpected delays; or being unable to wander from a set lesson plan, if the planned topic has little appeal to the student.

Use clever software to enhance and personalise your online lessons

Most language lessons require students to convey aspects of their lives in a foreign language that the teacher will lack personal experience in. This is something which is inherently difficult to do.

Yet with creative use of software, one can make the desktop into a theatre of visual input; far more easily eliciting speech from the student who lacks confidence in explaining what he knows in spite of the restrictions of a foreign tongue.

Make the desktop into a theatre of visual input.

The next time your student answers the question of where he comes from, you can immediately throw the very town he grew up in onto the screen in photographic detail. When you ask, “What are your hobbies?” you can, in a matter of seconds, find a video showing exactly their brand of car, snowboard, or sewing machine in action. If they have recently watched a show on Netflix, and they want to practice speaking about it, you could go to exactly that platform to show the same scenes they are trying to account.

The right equipment and decorum pays off

The full exploitation of this new horizon of teaching online requires some adaptation on your behalf. You should certainly have digital versions of your books, requiring scanning and software know-how. You ought to have a good quality audio/visual setup and a quiet keyboard and mouse. A drawing tablet is an excellent investment, as is a ‘gooseneck’ webcam mount to avoid noise conduction.

Cosmetic changes, such as using an attractive desktop wallpaper, subconsciously add value to your lessons.

You should take care over the appearance of your room – which is your classroom now – and over your webcam manner; you must get used to seeing your own webcam feed on-screen (I recommend the MPC media player) while interacting with another person. Cosmetic changes, such as hiding your taskbar and desktop shortcuts, and using an attractive desktop wallpaper subconsciously add value to your lessons.

In my experience, my investment of money and care into the presentation of my lessons has been a virtuous circle, reigniting my pleasure in my work and motivating me to work smarter.

Take charge of your time, money and teaching style

As an independent online teacher you must get accustomed to being entirely responsible for your own successes and failures. This also means being entirely free to teach how you wish.

For me, this has been the most valuable part of my move online: not merely the end of frustrating obligatory commutes, the increase in earning potential, and the increase in working comfort, but the opportunity of taking my teaching into my own hands, and to deliver my lessons in a way that is ever more authentically personalised to the student.

A Freelancer’s Challenges: Stuck in the Middle Doing It Yourself

in Professional Development
Photo: kaleidico, unsplash

I envy owners of Berlin Spätkaufs (Spätis): They buy low and sell high. For €.50 per unit price (or less), they get Fisherman’s Friend mints and turn around and sell them for €1.50 or €1.70. They have a very clear and up-to-the-minute accounting of profit and loss, of what is valuable and what is not, of what sells and what stays. The markup on low-priced products is unbelievably high and unbelievably unnoticed. Volume is key, and products are undifferentiated and invariable. Value is perceived and gained in the instant or a short time after purchase. Cash changes hands and products last a week or much less. Very little surprise, wonder, or thought is provoked by a purchase of mints.

I don’t sell products. In the knowledge industry, as most of us are in, the math is not so simple. How do you price your time and knowledge, measure the value you impart to people, and get your clients to pay for it? Mints are easily countable and quantifiable; knowledge and experience, much less so.

The knowledge and service industries deal in intangibles: feelings, experience, perspectives, counseling, group and individual psychology, understanding, growth, and information. Time horizons are long and value in this context varies substantially from person to person.

From Teacher to Solopreneur

Since becoming a teacher in 2010, I have relabeled, repositioned, and reskilled myself as a trainer, consultant, lecturer, editor, writer, and moderator. I no longer call the people I work with students, but clients. Time is measured in quarters and calendar years. I am accountant, marketing and sales director, business development executive, director of studies, key accounts manager, web and social media VP, copywriter, CFO, and office assistant, all while carrying out direct client-interfacing functions, roles, and tasks.

For most of us working in this field, we are self-employed business people or freelancers. And my choice to work in Germany as a freelancer has meant constant adaptation. I was little prepared after leaving the Berlin School of English to be my own business. Learning and adapting my approach to work has been promising, unclear, exhilarating, down, up, changing, and scary. I’ve headed in one encouraging direction, backtracked, changed course, and sometimes gone even further down a previously tread path. I have been steadily searching since 2010 for ways to make work better and to make it work for me. Where to begin has been a regular question.

Professional development to me is the marriage of ideas from management professor, author, and researcher Michael Porter with those of career counselor and self-work author Richard Nelson Bolles. One phrase from Porter has stayed with me: “stuck in the middle,” a phrase to describe businesses competing on price only, without a strategy, unfocused and undifferentiated. From Bolles, the sentence, “No one is going to care of or rescue you or your career. You have to do it yourself.” I don’t want to be stuck in the middle and I don’t expect or want anyone else to shape my career.

Career Tips and Friendly Words for Freelance Teachers: Paul Says Hello from Ireland

in Professional Development

 

Long-time Eltabber Paul recently moved from busy Berlin to quaint rural Ireland. There, he took a little time to sit back and ponder over freelance English teachers’ major challenges and possible solutions. He’s happy to share his thoughts and experiences with you.

The perennial problem for English teachers is that there is simply not enough work available from private language schools. I have tried to assemble some good and original suggestions to mitigate this issue. The bad news is that the good suggestions may not be original and the original suggestions may not be good (well, let’s see about that).

It may be a bit late for this year but there could be vacancies for teachers at summer schools. Cancellations mean that these might only be available at short notice. Given that most of this work is likely to be available in the UK, it may give some teachers a chance to meet up with friends and relatives. However, many firms give preference to applicants who are willing to participate in social events in the evening and on weekends.

At the ‘cheap’ end of the market class sizes can reach 15, although 6 would be closer to the average. Groups will often comprise several nationalities, which offers both challenges and opportunities. Having a repertoire of tried and trusted games is a great advantage. Make sure your travelling and accommodation costs are clearly defined in the contract.

Be open-minded about what you offer

Another strategy is to seek out clients in a particular profession e.g. law, medicine, IT, insurance… It helps if you have experience in one or more of these specialities but there are masses of books which will supply enough material to put together a marketable course. To illustrate the point, I recently gave a fifteen week course in ‘Fashion and Design’. Those who know me will be aware that a fashion guru is something I am definitely not.

My next suggestion necessitates good IT skills. Many clients have a fairly good level of English but panic when they have to produce some written material where accuracy is absolutely paramount.

Often they want someone to proof-read letters, reports, dissertations, job applications or press releases. A colleague of mine started doing this in Germany to supplement his teaching earnings and within five weeks it had become his principal source of income. The key to success in this field is a really top quality website. Note: you are not translating; a knowledge of the customer’s language can help but is not essential.

Finally, over the past ten years teaching foreign languages in schools in the UK has suffered a steep decline. Once, English teachers working abroad were neither required nor expected to speak the language of the country in which they were employed. Now attitudes of schools have changed and it is a distinct advantage to have some competency in foreign languages.

Apart from anything else, learning your students’ language helps you to anticipate the problems they may have in learning English.

Have a good summer!

 

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